1308: Adventurer's Guild

The Final Fantasy XIV beta closes down early tomorrow morning, so I've been making the most of it this weekend. I've levelled my Thaumaturgist class all the way to 20 — the level cap for the beta — and had a play around with the Weaver crafting class for a bit, taking that up to level 11. This gives me a nice head start ready for when live service begins — though the nice thing about Final Fantasy XIV is that if at any point you fancy a change, just switch out your weapon and bam! You're another class.

This carries its own considerations however — the main one being that if you switch to a class based in a city you've already done all the low-level quests in, you might struggle to find things to do if you're not used to all the additional stuff the game offers. In that particular situation, you turn to any one of a number of different possibilities: the short, snappy, time-limited Levequests; your Hunting Log, which challenges you to hunt down specific monsters in set quantities in exchange for very generous experience point rewards; Guildhests, which are short, extremely fun co-op challenges you take on alongside other players; or simply grinding.

I wanted to give another shout-out to the amount of effort that's been put into the game's story. As well as the usual MMO-style "random people need you to do odd jobs" quests you get around the place, there's a "main quest" to follow, too. After a certain point, this quest tasks you with travelling to the other two capital cities in the world to meet their leaders and start making preparations for what is clearly going to be some sort of Epic Battle later in the plot. What was particularly great about this quest was the fact that it makes you feel super-important — you're sent off on an airship to the other cities, and as the ship leaves, the Final Fantasy prologue theme triumphantly blares out, as majestic as ever. Then you get some awesome "meanwhile" scenes — something that doesn't tend to happen in MMOs — that give you a real feeling of the plot unfolding even when you're not present. There's some characters who look a lot like FFXII's Judges in play, it seems, and I'm looking forward to the inevitable confrontation with them later in the story.

It's hard to pin down one thing that's quite so satisfying about FFXIV because it really is an example of lots of overlapping systems complementing each other very well. There are lots of different ways to play, and plenty of means to ensure that you shouldn't find yourself getting bored or with nothing to do — unless, of course, you don't enjoy the base mechanics, in which case there's probably not a lot that can be done for you. The final game's going to be great; I can't wait to see what the future holds in updates and expansions.

1307: Thaumaturgist

You'll have to excuse any typos in this post; I'm very tired due to having spent a significant proportion of the day/evening playing the Final Fantasy XIV beta. And I'm pleased to confirm that it's very much living up to my expectations.

I'm playing a Thaumaturgist this time around — in the last phase of beta I played a Pugilist. I was a little concerned that the game would fall into the usual MMO trap of all classes playing in a pretty similar manner — spamming the same combination of hotbar items over and over again, repeat until dead — but the Thaumaturgist plays noticeably differently to the Pugilist. As it should be.

While the Pugilist is a melee character that demands you get close in to — and preferably behind — your enemies, the Thaumaturgist is a ranged magic damage dealer. Unlike your common or garden usual MMO mage, though, the Thaumaturgist makes use of an interesting mechanic that, thematically, represents their "aetherial balance" between "Astral Fire" and "Umbral Ice". Essentially, what this means is one of two things: if you're in Astral Fire state, you do increased damage with your fire spells, but they also cost more magic points to cast; if you're in Umbral Ice state, your spells do less damage but your magic points regenerate a lot more rapidly than they would usually. Playing a Thaumaturgist effectively involves knowing how to use these two states effectively to ensure you have good damage output while also keeping your stock of magic points high.

That's not all, though. Each of the classes in FFXIV has its own unique questline to follow, with new "episodes" in the story coming every five levels or so. The nice thing about these is that they have their own storyline to follow, but also they help teach you things about your class you might not have realised. The level 15 quest for the Thaumaturgist, for example, is essentially a stealth mission that teaches you about the effectiveness of your Sleep spell: you're tasked with sneaking in to retrieve an artifact, and rather than fighting the strong enemies who are between you and it, you simply put them all to sleep and prance through singing "trollolololol" or something.

What I've really been surprised about is how much effort's been put into the narrative side of things — something that's often neglected in MMOs. The genre giant World of Warcraft, for example, has an enormously rich and detailed setting to draw on, and yet — at least in its early incarnations, I haven't been back since Catacylsm — this storytelling potential was utterly squandered in boring quests that were given to you in the form of dull text readouts.

Final Fantasy XI, XIV's predecessor, was somewhat better in that there were "missions" as well as "quests" to do — these often incorporated cutscenes, story progression and even boss fights at times, but XI's difficulty and painfully slow progression meant that a lot of people might not have got very far.

XIV nails the balance. There's a ton of solo content you can do, with a storyline to follow that makes your character feel important. There are recognisable non-player characters whom you come to have various feelings about, and events occur that actually have some sort of meaning. There's also a lot of instanced battles where you get your own private special event without other players interrupting — proper boss battles. And these aren't just like fighting any other monster — sometimes you'll be battling alongside other non-player characters in a huge skirmish, other times you'll have to hold out against seemingly overwhelming odds until an NPC shows up to tip the balance in your favour.

It all feels like an actual Final Fantasy, in short, rather than an MMO with a Final Fantasy skin atop it. Your incentive for progression comes as much from the unfolding story and the cool setpieces as it does from gaining yet another level.

I haven't done a lot of group stuff yet, but I did try a Guildhest earlier. This also gave me the opportunity to try the Duty Finder system, whereby you mark yourself as wanting to do a specific multiplayer "thing" — be it a Guildhest, a dungeon or something else — and then let the game match you with other people looking to do the same thing automatically. Pleasantly, you can continue playing while you wait to find a party — it's a good time to take on the short, snappy, time-limited "levequests" for some pocket money and experience.

As for the Guildhest, it was short but very enjoyable. It was essentially a party-based arena battle intended to give players practice at working together and trying not to aggro multiple groups of enemies. Initially, you and your teammates must simply take out two parties of relatively easy monsters; then another set appears, accompanied by a huge boss monster. Inevitably, they all come charging towards you, so it becomes necessary to prioritise your targets — taking out the smaller things first before starting on the big boss. When you've successfully completed it, the iconic Final Fantasy fanfare plays as if you'd just completed a battle in a "normal" Final Fantasy game — a nice touch.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how the game continues once it officially launches later this month — the current beta only allows you to progress up to level 20 and is still lacking a couple of features. The only real challenge is going to be — as ever — juggling both it and other games I want and/or need to play!

1304: Reppin' the Row

The Saints Row IV embargo lifted earlier today, and some of you may have already read my contribution to USgamer's review. Since I wasn't the main reviewer on that, though, I thought I'd take a moment or two to write something a bit more personal about why I like it so much and why you, dear reader, should probably pick the game up when it comes out.

Saints Row IV is exactly, as many people have already said today, where the series needed to go. Rather than aping Grand Theft Auto — something the series hasn't really been doing since its first installment, and even then it was its own distinct thing to a certain extent — it's gone full-on batshit crazy, and is all the better for it.

Let's back up a moment and look at a game that clearly had a significant impact on Saints Row IV's development: Crackdown.

Crackdown was an interesting game, and one of the more underrated titles in the Xbox 360's library. Most people picked it up purely for access to the Halo 3 beta, but I spent a lot of time with both Crackdown and its subsequent sequel. It wasn't perfect, but it was good fun, particularly when you shared the experience with a friend. It was one of the few games in which the relative lack of storyline helped rather than hindered the experience — it meant that leaping around from rooftop to rooftop collecting those elusive "agility orbs" didn't feel at odds with what you were "supposed" to be doing in narrative terms. Rather, Crackdown set itself up to be a superpowered playground, and that's exactly what it provided. To make things even better, it makes the best use of Achievements I think I've ever seen on the platform, encouraging players to cooperate with their friends to complete various silly challenges, such as playing tennis with a car and a pair of rocket launchers.

Crackdown's biggest thrill was its sense of freedom — the feeling that you could go anywhere, do anything, or at least anything within the constraints of the controls you were provided with. The game encouraged you to explore and try to do ridiculous things. One of the first things a lot of people tried to do was climb the tallest tower in the city, then leap off without dying. Sure enough, in the full version of the game you get an achievement for doing both of these things. It's a game that not only encourages its players to have fun, it rewards them for it.

Saints Row IV is, to a certain extent, the same. While it has a more structured narrative than Crackdown ever did, it has that same sense of freedom that comes from the use of ridiculous superpowers. Not long after starting the game, you're provided with both super speed and super jump powers, both of which can be gradually upgraded. Eventually, you're not only hurtling along the roads faster than traffic, you're running up walls, leaping from building to building, gliding across half the city in a single bound, then crashing down to earth, scattering everything and causing chaos around your landing area. You're encouraged to make full use of these powers by collecting Saints Row IV's equivalent of Agility Orbs — and there are over a thousand of them to find. You're also challenged to make skilful use of them by climbing vertigo-inducing alien towers, and to use them in creative ways to clear out heavily-fortified alien outposts.

The activities you'll be indulging in while playing Saints Row IV are diverse, and there's been an obvious and conscious move away from the more "criminal" activities seen in Saints Row The Third. You're still doing things like deliberately injuring yourself for insurance fraud, though this time around your superpowers causes your ragdoll to go cartwheeling down the road for miles at a time, making the experience far more akin to something like Burnout Paradise's Showtime mode than anything else. At another moment, you might be using telekinetic powers to throw objects, cars and people through hoops. On another occasion, you might be carefully using your superjump to accurately land on platforms in an abstract environment, or racing through Wipeout-style tunnels in an attempt to score as many points as possible before you reach the end. There's a lot to do, and pretty much all of it is genuinely fun, whether you're alone or playing co-op with a friend.

The story provides a good impetus to keep playing, too. The characters are all endearing, despite all of them having "asshole" tendencies to varying degrees, and there's a real sense of camaraderie between them. Those who have played earlier games in the series will be pleased with some significant nods towards series continuity — including a guest appearance by Eliza Dushku, who played Shaundi back in Saints Row 2 — but this is never done in such a way as to feel exclusionary to those for whom this is their first Saints Row game. Collectibles include audio logs from each of the major characters, so you can delve into their backstory as much or as little as you like — and it's clear that the team at Volition considers this motley crew far more than just generic tropes.

By far the best thing about the whole experience, though, is how much ownership you can take of it all. You can design your own character to be however you please. It can be male, female, transgender or anything you please. It can be attractive, ugly, fat, thin, realistic, alien-looking… the list goes on. And once you're into the game, you can continue to feel like your character is "yours" by choosing their voice, the way they taunt people and the way they compliment them. Seeing them in cutscenes is a constant delight, even if they don't look anything like "you" — there's something inherently satisfying about seeing a character that is entirely of your own design playing the leading role in a game. Of course, it's mostly an illusion — there's only a limited selection of voices to choose from, for example — but even knowing that, there's a huge amount of joy to be had from it being "your" character while still having a personality that has obviously been written with some care.

Short version, then: you should play Saints Row IV. It's out soon. Buy a copy. You won't regret it.

1302: ZETTAI RYOUI-- I mean HERO

Have I mentioned ZHP, aka Zettai Hero Project: Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman on these pages yet? I forget. If not, I'm about to. If I am about to repeat myself, eh, whatever.

ZHP, as I will refer to it from now on to save my sanity, is an RPG from Nippon Ichi for PSP (Vita compatible). Its aesthetic and style is strongly reminiscent of NIS' flagship strategy RPG series Disgaea, but it's a very different sort of game — rather than being a turn-based strategy RPG, it's a turn-based sort-of-roguelike in which you control a single character.

The concept of ZHP is pleasingly ridiculous. The Earth's hero, the Unlosing Ranger, is on the way to save the world from villain Darkdeath Evilman when he gets run over. As he dies, he passes on his powers to the silent protagonist you spend the rest of the game playing. You, as the new Unlosing Ranger, are immediately thrown into NES-style turn-based RPG combat against Darkdeath Evilman and are defeated almost as quickly as combat begins. Thus begins a lengthy adventure to "train" yourself how to be a proper hero.

I'm only about 10 hours or so into the game so far so I can't comment with any authority on how the game progresses, but I'm really enjoying it. It's pleasantly portable friendly while at the same time being deep enough to also encourage hefty play sessions if you've got the time or inclination. Despite being turn-based, the dungeon crawling, exploration and combat feels very fast-paced and enjoyable. There's a lot of loot to collect, all of which is reflected on your character's appearance when you equip it, but a lot of it is very temporary — items have very limited durability, and thus become all but useless after a while.

Progression in ZHP is unconventional and bizarre. Unlike a traditional roguelike, there's no permadeath — instead, being defeated in a dungeon tots up all the levels you gained on that particular run and adds them to your "Total Level". This, in turn, provides bonuses to your base statistics, which means that "level 1" the next time you go into a dungeon is a significantly better "level 1" than it was at the start of the game. This progression can be supplemented by inserting various objects into your body, at which point they become "chips" that affect your base statistics. Then there's Hero Energy to direct around, booster items to plug into your chips and all manner of other nonsense. It's unlike anything I've ever seen before, but it seems to work really well.

At the stage I've just got to in the game, I've just unlocked a 60-floor dungeon that is clearly intended for grinding purposes. Given that the maps, enemies and even environments are randomly generated each time you enter, the whole game could have been this enormous dungeon and I'd have been happy, but there's a fun and surprisingly "nice" story running alongside it all too — part of the game's concept is that by running through the dungeons in "Bizarro World" you're helping solve the problems of "real" people back on Earth while simultaneously powering yourself up enough to battle Darkdeath Evilman.

Anyway. If you need a portable RPG — and one that's both toilet- and commute-friendly — then it's well worth a look. Don't let the Disgaea-esque aesthetic put you off if you weren't a fan of that series — ZHP is a very different beast indeed and well worth your time.

1297: "Remember When..."

"…games were fun?"

It's a question often trotted out any time there's some sort of controversy in the video games medium, whether it's someone saying something stupid, or something in a game offending someone. Basically any time there's discussion beyond "this game are good, I liked the graphics the best".

Actually, that's grossly unfair to those who do good work on video games criticism when there isn't some sort of overblown controversy going on, but it is accurate to say that there are some people out there who use "remember when games were fun?" as a method of attempting to shut down discussion beyond simple, relatively superficial comments.

"Games are fun" isn't even a particularly accurate statement to make these days, because there are plenty of experiences out there that are specifically designed to be not fun. Take something like Corpse Party, which I wrote a little about yesterday, or Silent Hill — neither of those series are intended to get you thinking "this is fun; I'm having a good time". Quite the opposite, in fact — both are intended to unnerve, disturb, frighten and depress you. This doesn't make them bad games, however; in fact, it makes them extremely good games, because they both succeed admirably in achieving what they set out to do; both are genuinely unnerving, disturbing, frightening and depressing experiences.

Take something like Journey or Flower, too; neither of those carry the deliberately negative emotional baggage of stuff like Corpse Party or Silent Hill, but neither are they particularly designed to be "fun". Rather, they're artistic, contemplative experiences that are enormously open to interpretation; your own personal interpretation of both games might be that you find them fun, but likewise you might find them sad, or they might make you angry, or they might leave you awestruck at the scenery, or… you get the idea.

Visual novels, too, aren't designed to be "fun", at least not in the traditional sense of "having fun gameplay". No, you might find the characters, setting or story of a visual novel to be fun to hang out with or immerse yourself in, but the actual act of "playing" a visual novel is not fun at all. And that's fine — it's not a negative thing at all. In the case of visual novels, "gameplay" can distract from the narrative, which is the reason to play (or, more accurately, as many fans say, "read") these games in the first place. (There are exceptions, of course; Aselia the Eternal strikes a great balance between narrative and gameplay, and successfully integrates both into a surprisingly coherent, if technologically rather primitive, experience.)

So yeah. I remember when games were just fun. That was cool, I guess, but I'm much more of a fan of the diversity of experiences we have today. I enjoy the fact that modern games make me think or make me feel something. I'd be kind of sorry if we didn't strive for anything more than "just fun" in interactive entertainment.

1296: Repeated Fear

After re-finishing Corpse Party for the second time (and this time around actually playing through all the bonus chapters) I moved straight on to its sort-of-sequel Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, a game which I've owned for quite some time but haven't got around to because I wanted to replay Corpse Party first.

So far, I'm very impressed. Book of Shadows maintains the things that were great about Corpse Party — its dark, mature storyline; its realistically flawed but likeable characters; its unusual but startlingly effective soundtrack; and its incredible, incredible sound design and voice acting — while making a few significant and notable changes.

The most notable change from the previous Corpse Party is that it's no longer a top-down RPG-style affair and has instead become a first-person perspective point and click adventure with lengthy visual novel-style sequences to advance the plot. I'm fine with this, but I was also fine with the top-down nature of the original. I actually really liked the fact that the first Corpse Party had all the trappings of a JRPG — top-down perspective, a menu you pop up with the triangle button, hit points — without any fighting whatsoever. (That said, the PC-98 original version of Corpse Party, of which the PSP version is one of several remakes, concluded with a boss fight.)

Book of Shadows' shift to the first person is an interesting one, because despite the change in perspective and despite the change from tile-based backdrops to hand-drawn environments, it's still recognisable as Heavenly Host Elementary School. The map is the same; the rooms are laid out the same; you're just seeing them from a different perspective. This gives a pleasing degree of consistency to the experience.

The concept is peculiar but kind of neat, too. One of the "wrong ends" of the original Corpse Party saw the band of unfortunate teens travel back in time after successfully reversing the charm that had got them into the school in the first place, only to find themselves repeating the same events exactly as they were before — thereby dooming themselves to the same fate. Book of Shadows runs with the idea that the characters being aware of this "time loop" might see them try to cheat their fate, and the first chapter at least explores what happens if a particular tragedy that occurred early in the first game was averted. In doing so, we get a chance to spend a lot more time with characters who didn't get a great deal of screen time in the original game (because they were the first to be unpleasantly murdered) and gain a greater understanding of both them and their relationships with others in the process.

I'm digging it so far. The palpable sense of menace of the original is very much intact in this new game, as is the wince-inducing violence — though as with the previous game, Book of Shadows has a wonderful understanding of the concept of "less is more" when it comes to horror. The most effective scares come from the imagination rather than gory scenes on the screen — and while Book of Shadows, like its predecessor, certainly isn't afraid to show the aftermath of a violent event, the actual instance of something unpleasant happening tends to be depicted through nothing more than text and sound.

Book of Shadows deserves particularly special mention for its sound. The original Corpse Party made magnificent use of fake 3D effects in the stereo field to make it sound like people were whispering in your ear, standing behind you and all manner of other things. Book of Shadows continues this and somehow manages to be even more effective. In an early scene, for example, you're playing the role of the character Naomi, who finds herself in bed with her possibly-a-lesbian best friend Seiko, who is over for a sleepover. When the lights go out and Seiko falls asleep, you can hear her soft breathing and occasional murmuring to herself in your left ear while Naomi ponders things to herself; when Seiko is roused by Naomi's mumbling, her voice sounds like she's lying right next to you. It's unnerving in its realism, but startlingly effective for immersing you in the game world and story.

I'm partway through the second chapter of Book of Shadows so far. I'm enjoying the "what if?" nature of these chapters, but what I'm really looking forward to is the not-so-secret final chapter that actually acts as a sequel of sorts to the original story. I'm intrigued to see where the story goes, and despite the fact it's such a consistently unpleasant, depressing series, I really hope we see more in the future.

1295: Co-Op, Counter-Op

I like cooperative modes in games, though usually only when I get the opportunity to do so with people I know and trust. Co-op gameplay is often reliant on communication, you see, and as has been well-documented here in the past, I often feel a little uncomfortable when forced to communicate with strangers. I'm usually all right when it comes to text-based chat, but voice chat? No no no. Thank you.

I've had a few great co-op experiences over the years. Actually, one of them wasn't co-op at all — it was "counter-operative" in Perfect Dark for the Xbox 360. This mode, somewhere between traditional co-op and competitive multiplayer, cast one player in the role of the usual protagonist, and the other in the role of all the enemies in the level. If the protagonist character dies, the counter-operative wins; if the counter-operative player dies, meanwhile, they simply shift to another body and continue until no enemies are left.

One of my favourite instances of this game mode came when I was playing with my friend Calin on the first level of Perfect Dark — a level that had already played host to some frighteningly competitive speedruns between my friends and I. Calin was the Counter-Operative, I was the protagonist. Wandering through the level, I was surprised to discover there didn't appear to be a single trace of any enemies. I made my way down through the building, as you were supposed to do in the level, and got to the bottom. Still no enemies.

Suddenly… BIFF. My gun was knocked from my hand and my vision blurred. I'd been hit over the back of the head. I wheeled around to discover the only remaining enemy in the level — Calin had been through and, before I'd got there, systematically eliminated all his "extra lives," as it were — and it was coming down to a fist fight. By this point, we were both in stitches, which made flailing wildly at each other all the more difficult. I forget who "won" — probably me, because the protagonist has significantly more health than generic fodder enemies — but it was a hilarious experience.

My other favourite co-op experience is in Saints Row The Third. Saints Row's co-op is great because it's just the exact same game as in single-player, only there's two people running around causing chaos instead of just one. You can work together to complete missions, or participate in all the silly activities together, adding your scores together in an attempt to reach the various targets. Alternatively, you can both just tool around the open world completely separately if you desire, independently causing chaos. It's a lot of fun, particularly given the diverse array of different activities on offer in the world of Saints Row — one minute you might be flinging yourself in front of vehicles in order to commit insurance fraud; the next, you might be working your way through a "killing floor" gauntlet on the city of Steelport's favourite hyper-violent gameshow.

Having completed Saints Row IV over the weekend, I'm particularly keen to try that in co-op, as the single player was ridiculous enough. For those unfamiliar with the fourth installment, it's set in the same game world as Saints Row The Third, albeit a computer simulation of it instead of the "real" world. This means there's Tron-style visual effects all over the place, but more importantly it means you have "superpowers" such as super speed and a ridiculous Crackdown-style jumping ability. I can only imagine the ridiculous situations that will result from not one but two superpowered nutcases boinging around the city rooftops. I'm looking forward to trying it when the retail version of the game becomes available in two weeks.

1293: [Incredibly tough][Miq'ote][rod]

I'm getting a bit antsy for Final Fantasy XIV. I haven't felt genuinely excited about an MMO for a while — the last one I played, which was The Secret World, was something I picked up more out of idle interest than anything else. Final Fantasy XIV, meanwhile, is something I'm really looking forward to.

While I'm waiting for the announcement that the open beta has started and I can finally start building what will become my "permanent" character in the game, I've been reading back over some of the forum posts, and particularly about people who once played Final Fantasy XI and ended up leaving.

I enjoyed Final Fantasy XI a lot. I didn't play it for anywhere near long enough to reach the level cap or anything like that, but I enjoyed the experience of what I played. It helped that I had some good friends who played regularly, but it was also just an experience that I found enjoyable. I'm hoping Final Fantasy XIV recreates that kind of feeling, though I'm already aware it's a very different game — and I'm glad about that.

Final Fantasy XI was hard. Really hard. This was the kind of game where if you inadvertently got a monster chasing you that was too strong for you to beat, you'd better outwit them and run away as fast as possible, because they would chase you across the whole map, and they would kill you. To add insult to injury, Final Fantasy XI also penalised your experience each time you died, meaning that dying too much could actually result in you losing levels if you weren't careful — something I haven't seen in any MMO since. This gave the game a real feeling of consequence — if you got yourself into a situation you couldn't handle, you had better either figure out how you were going to deal with it, or accept your fate.

This sort of "penalty" thing is something that people praise Demon's Souls and Dark Souls for, because it makes death meaningful. And that's good. In World of Warcraft, death just means your equipment gets a bit damaged and you have a bit of a run back to your corpse, but otherwise there aren't really any major penalties you have to deal with. This means that in many cases, challenges can be brute-forced by simply chipping away, dying, running back, repeating. This isn't really possible when you're by yourself, as monsters who aren't being actively attacked tend to run back to their spawn point and heal fully, but if you're in a party it was most certainly possible.

In Final Fantasy XI, meanwhile, you had to work together. It was one of the most intensely cooperative games I've ever played, and while this sometimes led to player tempers flaring, I was fortunate enough for the most part to group with people who both knew what they were doing and were patient with newbies.

Getting into a fight in Final Fantasy XI was a big deal. It wasn't a hack-and-slash game; it was something where, when you saw an enemy, you had to carefully weigh up your chances of victory as a group. Once the battle began, everyone had to play their part and know what they were doing — even in combat against non-boss enemies. Battle was an intricate dance led by the Warrior, who maintained the enemy's attention while other classes dealt damage or healed the party. It was stressful, but in a good way; as I say, it was intensely cooperative, and the knowledge that what you were doing was important felt great. Contrast this with something like World of Warcraft, where I often felt rather detached in party play, particularly playing as a Mage. Combat often boiled down to little more than standing back and spamming the same few attacks over and over again while other people did their thing independently.

(Aside: I have no idea what "Abyssea" is, but people who stuck with Final Fantasy XI longer than me seem to complain about it an awful lot.)

I'm not yet sure how Final Fantasy XIV's cooperative play will work as I didn't get a chance to try it during closed beta. I am curious to see, though, since from what I've heard from other people, each class plays noticeably differently from the others. The Pugilist class that I experimented with had a strong focus on quickly triggering attacks in a specific order to form combos, and this was probably most like what I was doing as a Mage in World of Warcraft. You had to memorise the combination of buttons that was most effective, then repeatedly trigger them as appropriate. Final Fantasy XIV added a bit of extra depth, though; positioning is important, as you can dodge area-of-effect attacks and do extra damage from certain angles.

Party play in Final Fantasy XIV also features the return of the Limit Break gauge from Final Fantasy VII, which I'm interested to see — in this particular incarnation, it's a meter shared between the whole party which any member can use when it's charged. The exact effect it has is determined by who triggered it. I'm wondering how sensible and restrained people will be with this feature, or if it will end up getting spammed by people. We'll see.

With the recent announcement of Everquest Next and its impressive dynamic quests and terrain deformation, attention seems to have swung off Final Fantasy XIV a bit, but I'm still intending to give it a good shot. I really liked what I played in open beta, and I anticipate it's something that I'll enjoy sticking with — particularly if I get the opportunity to play with some people on a regular basis, which is looking likely.

Hopefully not too long to wait until open beta. Count on some enthusing on these very pages when it does arrive.

1290: The Never-Ending Battle

Oh, God. Reviews for Dragon's Crown came out today, and I had a feeling there was going to be at least one shitstorm over it.

Dragon's Crown, lest you're unfamiliar, is a new game for PS3 and Vita loosely inspired by the brawler classics of yesteryear such as Golden Axe, fused with some modern ideas from roguelikes and action RPGs. It gained notoriety prior to release for featuring some heavily exaggerated, almost abstract art, in which the "Amazon" character is a gigantic, musclebound behemoth of a woman; the "Sorceress" character has boobs that will give her significant back problems later in life; and the "Fighter" character has armour that would put the COGs from Gears of War to shame. The female elf ranger, meanwhile, looks almost normal, though she has some grade-A zettai ryouiki going on with her boots.

Here's the Sorceress and the Amazon.

SorcererandAmazon-1024x664 Now, you may have one of several reactions to the art used in this game. You may find it offensive in its overly sexualised depictions of women. You may find it ludicrous and amusing. You may find it beautiful. You may find it erotic or arousing. You may find it kind of cool in a stylised sort of way. Or you just might hate it not for what it represents, but simply because the style doesn't appeal to you.

Here's the thing: all of those opinions are "right". Or, more accurately, none of them are "wrong". Your opinion is your own, and you should take ownership of it, not be pressured into thinking what other people seem to think you should think.

Unfortunately, there are people on both "sides" of the argument that has sprung up around this game — leaving aside the people in the middle who either think it's "kind of neat" or "meh" — who are being a little unreasonable about all this. Not everyone, by any means — both Polygon and GamesBeat's reviews, for example, while differing wildly in their final evaluation of the game, read as fair comments that accurately reflect the authors' perspectives as people who strongly disliked the art — but there's a significant proportion of people both on the "pro" and "anti" sides of the debate who are, frankly, being a bit dickish.

The most obviously obnoxious side is, of course, the group of people who have just become collectively known as "the misogynists". The young men who enjoy their T&A and get defensive any time they feel someone is attacking them and their tastes. The same people who, in extreme cases, send death threats to people like Anita Sarkeesian simply for exploring depictions of women in video games.

However, I've seen equally obnoxious comments today on the side of people who dislike the art style and think it's sexist, misogynist or otherwise discriminatory. I've seen Dragon's Crown referred to as a "wank game" (by a woman) and numerous snide comments from people (men and women) on Twitter calling it "juvenile" or being otherwise disrespectful towards those who either don't have a strong opinion on the art style, or those who actively like it. I've also seen people implying that the people who do like Dragon's Crown will never get laid, and are just pathetic losers for whom, I quote, "the closest u will ever get 2 a woman is ur miku miku dominoes figurine" [sic — in reference to Hatsune Miku, the popular animated Japanese mascot who was recently used in a Dominos Pizza campaign in Japan.] Real classy, there.

When you see this going on, it's sort of understandable why the "misogynist" side gets overly defensive and wants to lash out at the people criticising them. It's not acceptable. The ones attacking the art style of Dragon's Crown are the same ones criticising others for disrespectful comments and behaviour — particularly towards women — and yet they're engaging in it themselves simply because someone disagrees with them. Not good at all.

Where do I stand on Dragon's Crown? I think it's cool. It's distinctive, heavily stylised and immediately recognisable — not to mention memorable. I don't find it erotic or arousing, personally — it's just too exaggerated for my particular tastes — but acknowledge that there may be some people who do. For context, I enjoy the art style of modern anime — particularly the more "moe" end of the spectrum — and freely admit that I believe drawings and animations can be as sexually arousing — sometimes more so — than photographs and videos. I also like looking at — and, even better, playing as — attractive female characters in video games, because they're everything I'm not, and I often identify or empathise with them a lot better than beefcake males.

Most importantly, I acknowledge that not everyone agrees with the way I feel and I wouldn't expect to make anyone feel the same way if they're just not into it. Similarly, I acknowledge that some people find Dragon's Crown's art distasteful, but I do not expect those people to be patronising, condescending and even, at times, outright aggressive towards those who do like the way it looks.

Let's maybe try to respect each other a little more, even when we disagree — even on controversial topics.

If only.

1289: Oh When The... You Know

I've been playing a game for review this evening, but I can't talk about it yet because blah blah embargo, etc. So instead I'm going to talk about Saints Row The Third, which, conveniently, is available for whatever price you please as part of the latest (pretty incredible) Humble Bundle.

Grand Theft Auto has been losing me for a while. It took me a long time to get around to finishing Vice City — though I eventually did — and I never finished San Andreas or Grand Theft Auto IV at all. (I also own the two Grand Theft Auto IV side stories, but haven't touched them at all.)

The problem is that Grand Theft Auto had started taking itself a bit seriously. While it's still full of cringeworthy puns and scathing putdowns of American culture, the stories themselves have been getting a bit too "gangsta drama" for me; there seemed to be less of the colourful characters from earlier installments and more in the way of people calling each other "bitch" and "motherfucker". (Confession: I actually had to turn the subtitles on in San Andreas not because I couldn't hear the speech, but because I couldn't understand what the characters were saying.) This is probably a grossly unfair assessment, but I've been struggling to maintain interest in them for quite some time, and Grand Theft Auto V doesn't really have me hyped at all. (This makes the fact the Internet collectively jizzes its pants every time a new screenshot appears especially frustrating, as I'm sure you can sympathise.)

I'm not sure what prompted me to pick up Saints Row The Third for PC. I don't even think it was a Steam sale — I'm pretty sure I bought it at full price shortly after it came out. Reviews I'd read had been mostly positive, with a few criticising it for not having as interesting a setting as Grand Theft Auto, but most had mentioned one important thing: fun.

I'd never played a previous Saints Row game, so I had no frame of reference to compare The Third to except for Grand Theft Auto. And it quickly became apparent that Saints Row The Third was the game I'd been wanting Grand Theft Auto to turn back into ever since Vice City. Freedom to run around causing chaos; lots of side missions to do; a plot that was enjoyable, silly nonsense; and the fact that if you wanted to run down the street punching everyone in the face, it didn't really feel "out of character" for the protagonist.

Saints Row The Third is a playground. Sure, there's a plot to follow, but the main attraction is the "activities" scattered around the map. These vary from destroying as much shit as possible while on foot and equipped with infinite ammo to destroying as much shit as possible while in a bloody great tank. There are also missions where you have to drive around with a tiger in your car, arena challenges where you have to defeat enemies and avoid traps, and "insurance fraud" missions where you have to fling yourself into traffic and injure yourself as much as possible against the clock.

By far my fondest memory of Saints Row The Third is the one and only time I've had the chance to play multiplayer with my good friend Mr Alex Connolly, though. We just so happened to actually be online and available at the same time for once, so we jumped into a game together and caused chaos. There's really nothing quite like rolling up to a character you know is another real person, letting them jump in your Tron-style car and then tearing around the city to cause some havoc. Saints Row The Third doesn't significantly change its structure when played in co-op, but the simple presence of another player helps make it even more fun than it already is.

If you've never played Saints Row The Third and like the sound of a chaotic romp through something like Grand Theft Auto used to be, that Humble Bundle I linked above is a fantastic deal. Or, let's not forget, the fourth entry in the series is coming soon. But that… that I can't talk about right now.